BOOSTING BRAIN WAVES IMPROVES MEMORY

Abstract

Have you ever wanted to improve your memory? Or have you struggled to remember what you studied? Memory uses special patterns of activity in the brain. This experiment tested a new way to create brain wave patterns that help with memory. We wanted to see if we could improve memory by using lights and sounds that teach the brain waves to be in sync. People wore special goggles that made flashes of light and headphones that made beeping noises. This trained the brain through a process called entrainment. The entrainment put the brain in sync at a specific brain wave pattern called theta. People whose brains were trained to be in theta had better memory compared to people whose brains did not get trained. We learned that entrainment is a cool new way to make memory better.

Figure 1

There were three parts of our memory experiment. First, people learned words on a computer screen, one at a time. Second, they took a break, and received 36 min of brain entrainment, consisting of lights and sounds. Third, they took a memory test, in which they saw a bunch of the words they studied, mixed in with new words. They were asked to remember whether they had seen each word before, classifying each as “old” or “new.”

Figure 2

In the first experiment, the group that received theta brain entrainment scored better on the memory test compared to the group that received white noise. In the second experiment, the group that received theta entrainment showed better memory results than the group that received beta entrainment. The difference between entrainment conditions was statistically significant, which means that these differences had a <5% probability of being due to random chance. The lines on the top of each bar represent the standard error of the mean, and they show how much the data points vary from the average.

Figure 3

(A) After learning the words, participants received audio-visual entrainment of their brain waves using either theta (4–6 Hz) or beta (14 Hz) stimuli. (B) During the memory test, participants had their brainwaves recorded with EEG. (C) The group that received theta stimulation showed higher theta activity during the memory test than the beta group did. This brain map (as if we were looking down on the brain from above) theta differences during memory: subtracting between groups that received either theta or beta stimulation beforehand. The color scale shows theta activity during the memory test. The main differences were seen in the frontal sites, which are circled.